[WikiEN-l] Re: Categories and NPOV: Libraries?

Thu Jun 30 21:19:35 UTC 2005

dpbsmith at verizon.net wrote:

>Anyway, it seems to me that librarians must deal with this sort of thing all 
>the time. And the many public libraries that use the Dewey Decimal system 
>can't just fall back on the Library of Congress. Although perhaps there's 
>some central authority that recommends Dewey classifications. But in any 
>case, someone has to decide whether Velikovsky is science or science fiction. 
>Who does? and how?
>  
>
 From my limited experience talking to librarians, and much less limited 
experience browsing libraries, the typical way it's done is to 
cross-reference under any categories that seem relevant, and shelve 
under the one that the author seemed to be aiming for.  So if it's 
clearly intended to be a work of science-fiction, it'll be shelved 
there.  If it's intended to be speculative science or something of that 
sort, it may be shelved under science.

They generally avoid some of the problems in this discussion because 
categories like "pseudoscience" don't exist---a book expounding a 
physics theory will be shelved under physics, and whether it's a good 
book by a Nobel Prize winner or a crappy book by a kook isn't the 
cataloging system's job to judge.

-Mark